THE TONY GOLLAN BLOG: SETTING HORSES FOR RACES AND HOPING YOU HAVE GOT THEM AT THE RIGHT MARK

By Tony Gollan | Friday, December 4, 2015

The Tony Gollan stable has been flying this season. The record breaking, multi-premiership winning trainer landed both features at Doomben last Saturday (the George Moore Stakes and the Mode Plate). The week before that Gollan won the Recognition Stakes and a week prior to that the stable saddled a treble at the Saturday metropolitan meeting. Here, Gollan talks about the horses that starred in his recent successes. Tony Gollan’s personal blog is exclusive to HRO

Anytime you win a Stakes race it always gives you great pleasure.

We’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy that feeling on more than one occasion in recent weeks ... and all of those wins have been important to us for different reasons.

Traveston Girl’s win in the Listed Recognition Stakes two weeks ago was very satisfying. She is a filly I’ve always had a huge amount of time for.

We took her to Melbourne very early in her career and she ran second in a Group 1 ... and to get her back into winning form was a good feeling.

We always felt she would get the mile ... maybe even a little bit further ... but there are always questions. I was happy that she answered a few of those questions in the Recognition.

She was the Queensland Three-Year-Old of the Year last season. I know there was a little bit of criticism around about her getting that award but that didn’t affect me. I am never worried about that sort of thing. I just got on with the job with her.

The result made me very happy for the owners, but also for the horse itself. She deserved to win a race like that. She had run well. She’d been in good company. We hadn’t hidden her away.

For all of those reasons it was a very satisfying win.

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Then Didntcostalot took out the Group 3 George Moore Stakes last Saturday.

That whole race was obviously just a good race for us with the stable scoring the trifecta.

Didntcostalot had sort of gone off a little bit when we got him but he was already a horse with good ability. When they go as fast as he does early on of course you do worry whether he can sustain that pace, but he is not a sit and sprint horse type of horse.

He has got a high cruising speed so we’ve ridden him that way since we’d had him ... all bar his first start. We held up a little bit too much there and he got beat. Ever since then Tegan (Harrison) has jumped on him and we’ve ridden him making use of his high cruising speed.

When you’ve got four horses in the race, which I had in the George Moore, you are trying to watch every one of your horses and, as I say, it was terrific to trifecta the race.

I was never thinking about the trifecta. It wasn’t what I thought would happen. I would have just been happy to win the race.

Having said that, I did think every horse I had in the race had a legitimate stake ... and that’s how it played out.
I had never won the George Moore, let alone saddle the trifecta.
Being the first trainer to trifecta a Group race in Queensland was obviously an extra bonus.

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Of my four runners in the George Moore Temple Of Boom was the one to miss out.

He had the big weight to carry at the weekend. His weight is a frustrating factor ... you know the way he is rated, but he has won a lot of money so he is what he is.

That style of race ... up-tempo on a firm track ... is not his style of racing. He’ll appreciate a different tempo. To be fair, Didntcostalot’s speed did Temple Of Boom in. He really had to carry that 59kg ... so he did get tried.

Temple Of Boom is more of a sit and sprint horse. He is much better on soft going and with a tempo that is not breakneck like it was on Saturday. That was a ridiculously fast run race as the overall time shows.

Temple Of Boom will improve with that run under his belt. He’ll go to 1350m now. He’ll go through that Summer Series into that QTIS race.

Whether this is his last preparation ... well, the next couple of runs will tell that tale for us.

He is an amazing horse. He is a sound horse. I’m sure he looked after himself late in the running. He dos that. He’s not silly.

He’s a good old boy and all I can say is he has come through the run terrific.

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Apart from the George Moore, we also won the supporting feature last Saturday with Secret Saga taking out the honours in the Listed Mode Plate.

Secret Saga is a big strong filly. She is built a bit like a colt. She was always a filly who was going to be a stakes horse from the first time we stepped her out ... and it was just important to get that beside her name.

I told the owners from day one when we were heading towards her first start that we had a stakes horse on our hands. It’s taken until now to win that stakes race, but it’s done now.

She’s won that I’m sure it won’t be her last, but it is good to get the first one out of the road.

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So the team is going well. Obviously we have got a lot of horses to help us get those results but we are trying to find a level of consistency in all of the ranks ... be it in a Maiden at a provincial meeting or a Stakes race on a Saturday.

We set certain horses for certain races and hope that we’ve got them at the right mark and results ultimately let us know whether we’ve been successful in doing that.

And we’ll find out more moving forward.

Magic Millions is certainly on the radar. At the moment we’ve got a bunch of horses in the stable heading for that meeting.

With the two-year-olds though you have to work day by day with them, which is always a bit scary. It is a long time till next week with them, never mind a meeting that is still over a month away.

With the older horses the plans are still not definite but they are a bit more settled ... less subject to sudden change than with the youngsters.

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Magic Millions day has been kind to me in the past. We’ve never won the big one but we have won a bunch of races on the card and this time we have a lot of horses set for different races on the day.

I want the Summer Carnival to continue on being good for us. As I say we have set a lot of horses for the summer after a very below par winter.

Magic Millions day I guess is like Stradbroke day in the winter. It’s the Grand Final of that carnival, so to speak.

We’ve got horses heading for it that are in good form at the moment.

Hopefully it can stay that way.

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